Zagara is getting released today. Going by her video she's pretty much the closest thing to having a Zerg base running around (although I can't wait to find out the Banelings are just as stupid as every other minion). I can't imagine she was particularly difficult to implement considering the Creep logic should already be in the game thanks to the engine.

The first thing that strikes me about this character: the pronounced tit-plates. You can see them in older SC2 concept art, sure, but this camera angle, chest-out arched body posture, cup enhancement, and light/dark color contrast on the area really pull the eyes to them now. Then, just below her ab-plates, between her legs, she's got a long, toothy vertical slit. Definately not any sexual imagery there!

In sci-fi, I get a little annoyed by tits=female with alien biology. It's just so lazy and unrealistic. I suppose, at least with the Zerg, you could argue Kerrigan's DNA is influencing the Queen's form. But if the Zerg are about efficiency, how do the vestiges of mammalian milk glands benefit an egg-based species? Is Zagara simply emulating Kerrigan? Maybe it's to exploit Terran psychology, since they are a current threat to the hive? New Zerg evolution: The Titling. Ravages Marines' faces with six floppy boobs. Stun effect. Reduced effect against female Terrans.

But isn't it more likely that the Queen is the representation of the male gentalia? Afterall, after the Queen injects fluid into the hatchery, creatures start to grow inside. If we are to question Blizzards design philosophy, could we reveal that they perhaps wanted Starcraft to fuck itself??

KnoutOut wrote:But isn't it more likely that the Queen is the representation of the male gentalia? Afterall, after the Queen injects fluid into the hatchery, creatures start to grow inside.

Female fish eject their eggs into the surrounding waters for fertilization. The female seahorse implants her eggs into the male for maturation. A Zerg Queen's egg-juice bukkake on hatcheries wouldn't be any less female when viewed from a wider biological perspective.

Abathur is back in rotation this week, and since I had the 2 Specialist games daily quest I gave him another shot.

I suppose after playing the game more since I played him the first time I think I finally understand what I'm supposed to do with him. Other than the one time I accidentally Deep Tunneled to a hostile Merc camp I helped win those two games. It felt great, but also a little weird that I was hiding in the base the whole time.

Heck, one of those games I killed the other team's Abathur somehow. That was just so random.

HotS, which runs on SC2's engine (anyone applying for HotS development team has to know the SC2 editor), is MUCH prettier than SC2. I assume this has to do with the fact there's not hundreds of units on the field, but yes- I still stand by the hope that the voices aren't final. I highly doubt it now though considering they are releasing all these videos of them. It really kills the immersion for me. Plus, I get that it's supposed to be funny to a degree, but there's no reason for Diablo, for example, to crack witty jokes or silly puns. The entire battlefield itself, for any version of it, does not "crack jokes", it's entirely serious: Summon the demon, collect the skulls, curse your enemies, shoot the cannons. All the dialogue for those are "serious", yet the passive lines of characters are jokes and silly for the units you would least expect that from.

And of course, for whatever reason, Diablo is the Diablo 2 model with cartoonish transformations. And on top of that, I don't want to say Blizzard is "original" in many aspects, but they take so much from other companies now in regards to their video footage for the HotS trailers:

Take for example this video. Team Fortress 2's "Character with minimal speech dialogue given colorful and cheery vision of life" and of course every unit has the League of Legends method of using Flash on a 2D drawing to animate it for their trailer videos. I get it, those methods work for those companies, but you can't just copy/paste it to your own game. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the gameplay and game overall for a good time passer, but these little things are knee jerks for me. Of course, majority of their audience would never flinch at these things, from the vocals to the trailers, and that's a good thing, at least.

Blizzard is just doing what every other company has done in regards to WoW, as an example. It's an industry circulated around copying others, where originality is frowned upon. You see that kind of thing literally everywhere.

Lavarinth wrote:HotS, which runs on SC2's engine (anyone applying for HotS development team has to know the SC2 editor), is MUCH prettier than SC2. I assume this has to do with the fact there's not hundreds of units on the field, but yes- I still stand by the hope that the voices aren't final. I highly doubt it now though considering they are releasing all these videos of them. It really kills the immersion for me. Plus, I get that it's supposed to be funny to a degree, but there's no reason for Diablo, for example, to crack witty jokes or silly puns. The entire battlefield itself, for any version of it, does not "crack jokes", it's entirely serious: Summon the demon, collect the skulls, curse your enemies, shoot the cannons. All the dialogue for those are "serious", yet the passive lines of characters are jokes and silly for the units you would least expect that from.

I've been playing HotS a lot and all the "crack jokes" thing you're complaining about it almost universally said by the arena announcer. I don't play as Diablo and I've never heard him say anything funny.

And on top of that, I don't want to say Blizzard is "original" in many aspects, but they take so much from other companies now in regards to their video footage for the HotS trailers:

Blizzard has been derivative in their works since day one. Raging about it now is silly.